Stuff Your Brain Likes

How do we learn, what does stress do to your brain, can you multi-task, how important is sleep, are our brains all different?

I fell across an interesting talk that John Medina gave at Google’s author series (they invite authors to speak at lunch).  He talked about what scientists know about the brain and how to apply that knowledge to improving our daily lives.

He calls them brain rules.

This is not boring neurology talk.  He is a compelling speaker and there are some very useful takeaways from this 50 minute video.  And he’s amusing.

Our brain and our environment

Medina is the author of Brain Rules: 12 principles for surviving and thriving at work, home and school.

He’s also a developmental molecular biologist and research consultant. He is an affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, School of Medicine and director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research at Seattle Pacific University.

For starters he points out that our brain evolved in an environment where we were constantly moving.  So the worst way to learn or be productive is sitting in a classroom or a cubicle.

The 12 rules

Here’s a brief description of the 12 rules he write about.  But I can’t do justice in this short space  to the sound information he provides.  If you don’t read the book at least watch the videos on his site and the Google talk.

1. Physical exercise is the best thing for your brain. It increases oxygen to the brain, which blows out free radicals, increases your mental sharpness and boosts the creation of neurons.
2. The brain has evolved because the strongest brains, not the strongest bodies, survive. Our ability to solve problems, learn from mistakes, and create alliances with other people helps us survive.
3. Every brain is wired differently. Our brains develop at different rates and in different ways, so no two people are ever the same, even twins.
4. We don’t pay attention to boring things (like Powerpoint presentations) and our attention drops off after about ten minutes.  And by the way, this chapter will explain why we can’t multi-task.  So hang up the phone and drive.
5. Repeat to remember. This explains our short term memory and how we can remember things longer if we repeat them.
6. Remember to repeat. This explains long term memory and how repeated exposure to information at specific intervals helps move this data into our long term memory.
7. Sleep well, think well. Loss of sleep hurts attention, executive function, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning, and even motor dexterity.  One bit of advice: take a nap.
8. Stressed brains don’t learn the same way. Your brain can deal with stress for only about 30 seconds.  Beyond that stress damages memory, motor skills, your immune response, your ability to sleep and causes depression.
9. Stimulate more of the senses. Use your sight, sound, taste, smell and touch senses.  They work together so when you use them your brain encodes the information more robustly.
10. Vision trumps all other senses.   We are far better remembering pictures than words.  Reading is really inefficient compared to pictures.  From an evolutionary standpoint, we’ve been seeing pictures a lot longer than we’ve been reading. So our brain is better at encoding visual information.
11. Male and female brains are different. You don’t need a molecular biologist to tell you that but he makes an important point about how males and females can deal with a stressful situation as a team.
12. We are powerful and natural explorers. As babies, we learn by active testing through observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion.  And we never stop.

Also Medina has a blog worth visiting.

But enough reading for now.  Take some time to stimulate your other senses.  Play a video game.  Try a brain teaser or a puzzle.  We got plenty at Brain Games Software.

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